The Pentagon has determined that one of the nearly 600 prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba was incorrectly classified as an "enemy combatant" and would be returned to his home country, Navy Secretary Gordon R. England said. He declined to identify the prisoner or his nationality, but a Pentagon spokeswoman said the man had been captured in May 2002 in Afghanistan.

President Bush bypassed the Senate to install former Navy Secretary Gordon R. England as deputy secretary of Defense. England had been serving as acting deputy Defense secretary since Paul D. Wolfowitz left the No. 2 Pentagon post last May to become head of the World Bank. England's nomination for the deputy secretary position had stalled in the Senate. Under the Constitution, the president may circumvent the confirmation process by making appointments while the Senate is in recess.

President Bush announced that he had chosen an executive for a defense firm to be secretary of the Navy and a Pentagon weapons buyer to be secretary of the Air Force. Michael W. Wynne, Bush's choice for Air Force secretary, has been the Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics since 2003. He replaces James G. Roche, who resigned in January. Bush selected Donald C.

Three corporate executives are under consideration to lead the Air Force, Army and Navy, administration officials said Saturday. The three have been interviewed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the White House was expected to announce this week that it will send their names to the Senate for confirmation, the Washington Times reported, quoting unidentified sources. Gordon R. England, 63, who retired recently from General Dynamics Corp., would be nominated as Navy secretary; James G.

The nomination of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz to head the World Bank came as a surprise to many senior Pentagon officials and set off speculation Wednesday about his successor and about the future of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Officials at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity, named a number of potential candidates for the No. 2 Pentagon job. Among them are Navy Secretary Gordon R. England, a key Rumsfeld ally, and Stephen A.

Defense contractors bear a significant share of the blame for cost overruns in major U.S. weapons programs, said Ronald D. Sugar, chairman and chief executive of Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. The government's estimates and expectations may often be unrealistic but the industry's performance also is often poor, Sugar on Wednesday told an independent panel that the Pentagon appointed to review the U.S. military's weapons-buying programs in an effort to cut costs.

The steadily rising cost of the Iraq war will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year, Pentagon spokesmen said Thursday, as the price of replacing lost, destroyed and aging equipment mounts. The Pentagon has been estimating last year's costs for the increasingly unpopular war at about $8 billion a month. It rose from a monthly "burn rate" of about $4.4 billion during the first year of fighting in fiscal 2003.

The Navy's chief investigator concluded Friday that procedures were followed properly in the approval of Sen. John F. Kerry's Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Heart medals, according to an internal Navy memo. Vice Adm. R.A. Route, the Navy inspector general, conducted the review of Kerry's Vietnam-era military service awards at the request of Judicial Watch, a public interest group.